Twenty percent of the more than 110 million people who are expected to watch the Super Bowl on Sunday will only tune in to see the commercials created by the best of the best for the annual occasion, not the game.

That's what marketing research shows, said Mike Bernacchi, University of Detroit marketing professor, who predicts and evaluates the ads every year.

The National Retail Federation estimates that well over half of the population watches the Super Bowl, said Bernacchi, who predicted if more than 111.3 million watch Sunday, it will be the a record audience for the fourth consecutive year.

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This year, corporations will spend about $4 million for each 30-second ad to reach that gargantuan audience.

The rate was $3.5 million per 30 seconds last year.

"Ads have increasingly become a dominate force and reason to watch the Super Bowl," said Bernacchi, of Royal Oak.

Each year Bernacchi, of Royal Oak, and Paul Galbenski, marketing instructor at Oakland Schools Technical Center Northeast and 2012 teacher of the year, hold a Super Bowl party at Galbenski's house where they and six other experts evaluate the ads and rate them.

The two also do a poll of the teenagers who are enrolled in America's Marketing High School for their pick of the best ads. The online marketing school was created by Bernacchi and Galbenski and is offered to schools nationwide on the Internet.

Bernacchi said this will be the third substantial year for auto and auto-related ads, predicting as many as nine auto brands presenting special Super Bowl Ads.

"The reason is because the economy is doing better.

"Secondly, the ads will be longer this year, beyond 30 seconds; certainly rivaling any year in the past, and auto companies will be a primary player in that. At least half of the auto ads might be long ads," Bernacchi said. He attributed the emerging trend to Chrysler's 2-minute ads, including the favorite "Made in Detroit" commercial, over the past two or three years.

"Chrysler has had great success with those 2-minute ads so they really changed the face of Super Bowl advertising. They really forced the hands of others," Bernacchi said.

Surprising is Bernacchi's prediction that General Motors, after 10 years of buying the most ads, is not going to advertise during this year's Super Bowl. Instead, they are going to sponsor the English Premiere League's Manchester United, one of the top soccer teams in the world, which is the most popular sport everywhere in the world but the U.S., said Bernacchi.

GM is shifting its resources from the domestic market to the global one, he said.

Even though the number of auto commercials is so high this year, even without GM, it will be the beer company, Anheiser-Busch, that will buy more space than any of the auto companies, said Bernacchi -- about four-and-a-half minutes worth of ads, or an $18 million value. It has a contract that makes it the only beer company advertising at the big game.

Pepsico will continue to be a big advertiser. Pepsico's Dorito ads, which have been suggested by consumers, have been among the top ranking consistently.

A big trend this year will be the involvement of social media in the advertising mix, which means one commercial may ask viewers to respond to an ad via Facebook or Twitter.

How this will work out remains to be seen, Bernacchi said.

Advertisers using social media could be distracting people from the next ad with social media.

"If someone is taking your ad time away because they are tweeting, this is not good," Bernacchi said.

"Are there rules, no not so much. It may be a problem this year. It will be like the Wild West all over again," he said.

Bernacchi said the results of the poll of the student poll will be available on America'sMarketingHighSchool.org on Monday afternoon, after they are released to about 300 local high school students who will turn out for a party to hear the results.